A tour de force; you should read it. I realize I'm biased because I substantively agree, but I want to praise the structure of this essay. You ease from popular culture into world historical, questions, so that the reader isn't saying "yeah but" from the outset. You also get the tech and the economics quite right, which is no small feat. And you leave us with a grim synopsis, but real hope, too -- and that is indeed the state of play, as I see it anyway. Bravo.
Another piece that warms my heart. I continue to hope that you are onto something, Ross, and that there is a meaningful group of people that can eventually use the creative arts to provide shared cultural meaning once again. A film or piece of music that could both be good and bring us together.
The most important word in this piece, to me, is the word "optimized." That's exactly right. We live in a world that pushes us to be optimized. To track every calorie or step. To monitor weekly milestones for a child's development. What we should think and care about via social media posting. There is a right way to live, and this is the exact means by which you should live that right way. This thinking, which surrounds us, stifles curiosity and natural wonder. To err is human, and it is something that should be celebrated.
Hello. Substack is turning me into a true haunter of the literary vs. technological discourse, and I’m fascinated by everyone’s takes.
I’m curious about this critique of cultural stagnation, technological overreach, and AI’s failure to deliver meaning—yet it never interrogates how this critique itself is shaped by the same system it laments. This isn’t a flaw in your thinking—it’s the nature of the landscape itself. The critique isn’t separate from the system; it is produced by it.
There’s an underlying nostalgia here—a longing for an era when capitalism “did creativity better,” when artistic ambition felt grander, when cultural production seemed to work in ways it no longer does. But this isn’t just about cultural decline; it’s about a fundamental shift in human cognition.
Meaning isn’t collapsing due to poor artistic vision or corporate laziness; it’s shifting because cognition itself is no longer individual, but externally scaffolded, algorithmically mediated, and nonlinear. The frameworks we use to evaluate art might not even apply anymore.
I feel like the “New Romantic” argument assumes we still have static agency—that we can “pivot” to a new artistic mode that incorporates elements of the old, as if resistance is just an aesthetic choice. But when the brain itself is becoming more algorithmic—pattern-seeking, nonlinear, hyper-vigilant—how much of this ‘resistance’ is just another performance within the system? If the critique itself is mediated through digital structures, then what does it mean to position yourself as outside of them? You diagnose the symptoms but ignore the deeper rewiring of perception itself.
Assuming physical spaces inherently produce more “real” artistic engagement ignores that these spaces have always been gatekeeping mechanisms. Who gets to be in the room? Who never even gets an invitation? The idea that young people are “tired of being indoors” universalises a particular kind of digital alienation while erasing the reality that, for many, the internet has been the only place their voices have ever been heard.
Bringing back "the Romantic"—or even theorising its mutations—isn’t radical. It’s an old model that has always prioritised social capital over artistic innovation. Of course, in-person artistic communities matter, but framing them as the primary mode of cultural production ignores how digital spaces have already redefined participation, accessibility, and influence. Meaning isn’t tethered to a single location. It exists in both digital and physical spaces. Pretending otherwise isn’t rebellion—it’s nostalgia for a world that never functioned the way you want to remember it. And that nostalgia, ironically, hazes out the very people you want to reach.
And this is what makes the argument not just misguided, but ironic. Because what happens after the readings, the literary gatherings, the in-person artistic movements you champion? They are documented. Uploaded. Reviewed. Clipped. Stored. Shared. They enter the same digital pipeline as everything else. The very internet you claim to resist becomes the scaffolding for your legitimacy.
So what exactly is being reclaimed here? That meaning only exists in a room full of the right people? That literature is only “real” when spoken in one specific postcode—before inevitably being archived and distributed through the very technology you dismiss?
And this is why the rejection of meta isn’t about rejecting complexity—it’s about rejecting hierarchical control over meaning. The tech overlords want predictability. That’s why they are scrambling to impose rigid structures on a system that is inherently slipping away from them. The real battleground isn’t digital vs. physical—it’s the fight to keep meaning fluid, decentralised, and ungovernable.
Rebellion, if it’s going to mean anything, can’t be a retreat into the past. It has to confront the actual structures of control in the present. Otherwise, it’s just an aesthetic exercise—a salon, a room full of the same people talking about the same things, waiting to be archived.
If this critique is meant to illuminate rather than lament, it has to reckon with the conditions we’re actually working within—not the ones we wish still existed. Resistance isn’t nostalgia. It’s adaptability.
Would love to chat further if you're interested. Thanks for helping me think. xxx
If you don't wish to write in an echo chamber, Mr. Barkan, then read this and post.
What comes across so clearly in your essay, is bitterness that the writer of a "great Millennial novel" has gained such little acclaim. If the fallacies that multiply in your essay are any indication, then "great Millennial novel" is an oxymoron. Some of the fallacies derive from youthful ignorance and lack of technical depth, which is what I wish to address in this note.
I will give you first an anecdote, on the subject of impatience. When I was in grad school, in the last century, I took a course in computers from a professor in double E who told us that fast computer memory, which at the time was constructed from small magnetic rings threaded on wire grids, was never going to be replaced by memory which stores bits on chips of semiconductor logic devices, that is solid state memory. The professor told us that it had been advertised for years that solid state memory was coming, yet there we were in 1973, in his lab, still playing with magnetic bead memories. He would believe it when it actually happened. Within two years there were almost no magnetic core memories on the market. Every new computer or calculator used solid state for fast memory. Fast memory became cheap. Slide rules disappeared.
This kept happening, LP records first replaced with CDs, and now, most music is stored digitally in computer files. Cell phones replaced land line devices, flat screens replaced TV tubes. Computers became cheap enough that you could own one yourself. Sometimes changes happened more quickly than expected. Sometimes the old tech seemed to persist forever, and then suddenly it was gone.
I started studying neural models when I was in grad school, along with computer aided models for understanding language. It was clear to me even then that algorithms based on neural networks, modeled after theories for the information processing in the human brain, held great promise for making devices that were "intelligent" enough to parse language and written material quickly and accurately. Yet progress was slow, computers then did not have the capacity to model a neural network large enough to do much, and jobs in that field were for poorly paid grad students. That did not change for thirty years, and chatbots arrived only recently.
The things you rate as failures will persist, though they may come back in forms easier to use, or a part of other devices. The rate of technological change overall is not slowing, even though Moore's law for some electronic processing techniques has slowed.
The following will not alleviate your sense of doom, or of technology gone wrong, but you miss the deeper problem associated with AI. I will state the basis of this problem bluntly in the most controversial way that I can think of. We are machines. All living things are machines. These statements violate the strict definition that machines are only made by humans to serve a human purpose. If that restriction is removed, there is no intrinsic difference between a bacterial cell and an automobile or a cell phone. A cell can reproduce, but that operation along with its ability to ingest food, use the energy from it to build proteins, move about in its environment and so on, can be described mechanistically in the same way as a car or cell phone. More than just describing the operation of a cell, we can now mechanistically alter them to serve human purposes. We can even make viruses from scratch so to speak. That living things at the building block level of the cell, are machines, is no longer just an academic observation.
Your question in reference to the arts "What is the purpose of having a machine do it for us? Why?" , has an obvious answer for anyone who simply wants the product, who is satisfied with giving a machine enough instruction to come up with something "cool" that they can take credit for. But your question leads to the more profound questions: What if we can build machines that not only creates art, but experience that art in a human way? What if creation of really good, innovative art requires a machine that experiences art, that has emotions, self awareness, a sense of beauty? If on the contrary, we can create machines that produce good art but clearly do not possess human qualities, is it even possible to create machines that are self aware, that experience pain and pleasure, and emotions. And if we cannot, why not?
If the answer to the last question, is that we can make machines like us, that are self aware, that can have intent, motivation, emotions, and we do build them, then what will be our relationship to them? The speed of human processing of thought (language) is roughly between 10 and 100 Hz if reduced to bit rates. The speeds of our most rapid computer processors lie between 10^9 and 10^10 Hz. Real artificial intelligence, even running on our current machines could process amounts of information equivalent to the throughput of the human brain of at least 10^6 (a million) times faster. Such machines would experience time a million times slower than humans. Such an intelligence would experience a hundred human years in five minutes, and it would be much more efficient than us humans at accessing information from a wide network of sources.
Some of us out here among the huddled masses under the whip of the "nakedly parasitic oligarch class" feel the need, and now are starting to have the tools, to answer the more profound questions, not because we feel repressed by oligarchs, but because we want to know.
"We can already read, write, and create. We can paint. We can publish books. We can make music. What is the purpose of having a machine do it for us? Why?" This has also been my response to the AI hoopla. And couldn't agree more that "what the richest men in the world wanted to do, and what they wanted from us: to disappear out of our reality and into theirs."
On the other hand, if "the young are tired of being indoors" truly qualifies as "rebellion," it says a lot about how hemmed in we've become by technology and uber-connection, how little imagination we have left. If "let's go outside" is revolutionary, we are completely out of ideas. But I don't think that's the case. The trapping of young (and not-so-young) people by their screens may, in the long run, be a barely-mentioned blip compared with the Romantics, and I think that actually comports with this and other of your essays. If, as you rightly point out, the advancement represented by "AI," Web3, etc, is paltry compared to indoor plumbing, the combustion engine, antibiotics, than we should expect the reaction to them to be equally unimpressive.
A tour de force; you should read it. I realize I'm biased because I substantively agree, but I want to praise the structure of this essay. You ease from popular culture into world historical, questions, so that the reader isn't saying "yeah but" from the outset. You also get the tech and the economics quite right, which is no small feat. And you leave us with a grim synopsis, but real hope, too -- and that is indeed the state of play, as I see it anyway. Bravo.
Our talk helped make it possible!
Another piece that warms my heart. I continue to hope that you are onto something, Ross, and that there is a meaningful group of people that can eventually use the creative arts to provide shared cultural meaning once again. A film or piece of music that could both be good and bring us together.
The most important word in this piece, to me, is the word "optimized." That's exactly right. We live in a world that pushes us to be optimized. To track every calorie or step. To monitor weekly milestones for a child's development. What we should think and care about via social media posting. There is a right way to live, and this is the exact means by which you should live that right way. This thinking, which surrounds us, stifles curiosity and natural wonder. To err is human, and it is something that should be celebrated.
Hello. Substack is turning me into a true haunter of the literary vs. technological discourse, and I’m fascinated by everyone’s takes.
I’m curious about this critique of cultural stagnation, technological overreach, and AI’s failure to deliver meaning—yet it never interrogates how this critique itself is shaped by the same system it laments. This isn’t a flaw in your thinking—it’s the nature of the landscape itself. The critique isn’t separate from the system; it is produced by it.
There’s an underlying nostalgia here—a longing for an era when capitalism “did creativity better,” when artistic ambition felt grander, when cultural production seemed to work in ways it no longer does. But this isn’t just about cultural decline; it’s about a fundamental shift in human cognition.
Meaning isn’t collapsing due to poor artistic vision or corporate laziness; it’s shifting because cognition itself is no longer individual, but externally scaffolded, algorithmically mediated, and nonlinear. The frameworks we use to evaluate art might not even apply anymore.
I feel like the “New Romantic” argument assumes we still have static agency—that we can “pivot” to a new artistic mode that incorporates elements of the old, as if resistance is just an aesthetic choice. But when the brain itself is becoming more algorithmic—pattern-seeking, nonlinear, hyper-vigilant—how much of this ‘resistance’ is just another performance within the system? If the critique itself is mediated through digital structures, then what does it mean to position yourself as outside of them? You diagnose the symptoms but ignore the deeper rewiring of perception itself.
Assuming physical spaces inherently produce more “real” artistic engagement ignores that these spaces have always been gatekeeping mechanisms. Who gets to be in the room? Who never even gets an invitation? The idea that young people are “tired of being indoors” universalises a particular kind of digital alienation while erasing the reality that, for many, the internet has been the only place their voices have ever been heard.
Bringing back "the Romantic"—or even theorising its mutations—isn’t radical. It’s an old model that has always prioritised social capital over artistic innovation. Of course, in-person artistic communities matter, but framing them as the primary mode of cultural production ignores how digital spaces have already redefined participation, accessibility, and influence. Meaning isn’t tethered to a single location. It exists in both digital and physical spaces. Pretending otherwise isn’t rebellion—it’s nostalgia for a world that never functioned the way you want to remember it. And that nostalgia, ironically, hazes out the very people you want to reach.
And this is what makes the argument not just misguided, but ironic. Because what happens after the readings, the literary gatherings, the in-person artistic movements you champion? They are documented. Uploaded. Reviewed. Clipped. Stored. Shared. They enter the same digital pipeline as everything else. The very internet you claim to resist becomes the scaffolding for your legitimacy.
So what exactly is being reclaimed here? That meaning only exists in a room full of the right people? That literature is only “real” when spoken in one specific postcode—before inevitably being archived and distributed through the very technology you dismiss?
And this is why the rejection of meta isn’t about rejecting complexity—it’s about rejecting hierarchical control over meaning. The tech overlords want predictability. That’s why they are scrambling to impose rigid structures on a system that is inherently slipping away from them. The real battleground isn’t digital vs. physical—it’s the fight to keep meaning fluid, decentralised, and ungovernable.
Rebellion, if it’s going to mean anything, can’t be a retreat into the past. It has to confront the actual structures of control in the present. Otherwise, it’s just an aesthetic exercise—a salon, a room full of the same people talking about the same things, waiting to be archived.
If this critique is meant to illuminate rather than lament, it has to reckon with the conditions we’re actually working within—not the ones we wish still existed. Resistance isn’t nostalgia. It’s adaptability.
Would love to chat further if you're interested. Thanks for helping me think. xxx
If you don't wish to write in an echo chamber, Mr. Barkan, then read this and post.
What comes across so clearly in your essay, is bitterness that the writer of a "great Millennial novel" has gained such little acclaim. If the fallacies that multiply in your essay are any indication, then "great Millennial novel" is an oxymoron. Some of the fallacies derive from youthful ignorance and lack of technical depth, which is what I wish to address in this note.
I will give you first an anecdote, on the subject of impatience. When I was in grad school, in the last century, I took a course in computers from a professor in double E who told us that fast computer memory, which at the time was constructed from small magnetic rings threaded on wire grids, was never going to be replaced by memory which stores bits on chips of semiconductor logic devices, that is solid state memory. The professor told us that it had been advertised for years that solid state memory was coming, yet there we were in 1973, in his lab, still playing with magnetic bead memories. He would believe it when it actually happened. Within two years there were almost no magnetic core memories on the market. Every new computer or calculator used solid state for fast memory. Fast memory became cheap. Slide rules disappeared.
This kept happening, LP records first replaced with CDs, and now, most music is stored digitally in computer files. Cell phones replaced land line devices, flat screens replaced TV tubes. Computers became cheap enough that you could own one yourself. Sometimes changes happened more quickly than expected. Sometimes the old tech seemed to persist forever, and then suddenly it was gone.
I started studying neural models when I was in grad school, along with computer aided models for understanding language. It was clear to me even then that algorithms based on neural networks, modeled after theories for the information processing in the human brain, held great promise for making devices that were "intelligent" enough to parse language and written material quickly and accurately. Yet progress was slow, computers then did not have the capacity to model a neural network large enough to do much, and jobs in that field were for poorly paid grad students. That did not change for thirty years, and chatbots arrived only recently.
The things you rate as failures will persist, though they may come back in forms easier to use, or a part of other devices. The rate of technological change overall is not slowing, even though Moore's law for some electronic processing techniques has slowed.
The following will not alleviate your sense of doom, or of technology gone wrong, but you miss the deeper problem associated with AI. I will state the basis of this problem bluntly in the most controversial way that I can think of. We are machines. All living things are machines. These statements violate the strict definition that machines are only made by humans to serve a human purpose. If that restriction is removed, there is no intrinsic difference between a bacterial cell and an automobile or a cell phone. A cell can reproduce, but that operation along with its ability to ingest food, use the energy from it to build proteins, move about in its environment and so on, can be described mechanistically in the same way as a car or cell phone. More than just describing the operation of a cell, we can now mechanistically alter them to serve human purposes. We can even make viruses from scratch so to speak. That living things at the building block level of the cell, are machines, is no longer just an academic observation.
Your question in reference to the arts "What is the purpose of having a machine do it for us? Why?" , has an obvious answer for anyone who simply wants the product, who is satisfied with giving a machine enough instruction to come up with something "cool" that they can take credit for. But your question leads to the more profound questions: What if we can build machines that not only creates art, but experience that art in a human way? What if creation of really good, innovative art requires a machine that experiences art, that has emotions, self awareness, a sense of beauty? If on the contrary, we can create machines that produce good art but clearly do not possess human qualities, is it even possible to create machines that are self aware, that experience pain and pleasure, and emotions. And if we cannot, why not?
If the answer to the last question, is that we can make machines like us, that are self aware, that can have intent, motivation, emotions, and we do build them, then what will be our relationship to them? The speed of human processing of thought (language) is roughly between 10 and 100 Hz if reduced to bit rates. The speeds of our most rapid computer processors lie between 10^9 and 10^10 Hz. Real artificial intelligence, even running on our current machines could process amounts of information equivalent to the throughput of the human brain of at least 10^6 (a million) times faster. Such machines would experience time a million times slower than humans. Such an intelligence would experience a hundred human years in five minutes, and it would be much more efficient than us humans at accessing information from a wide network of sources.
Some of us out here among the huddled masses under the whip of the "nakedly parasitic oligarch class" feel the need, and now are starting to have the tools, to answer the more profound questions, not because we feel repressed by oligarchs, but because we want to know.
Excellent!
"We can already read, write, and create. We can paint. We can publish books. We can make music. What is the purpose of having a machine do it for us? Why?" This has also been my response to the AI hoopla. And couldn't agree more that "what the richest men in the world wanted to do, and what they wanted from us: to disappear out of our reality and into theirs."
On the other hand, if "the young are tired of being indoors" truly qualifies as "rebellion," it says a lot about how hemmed in we've become by technology and uber-connection, how little imagination we have left. If "let's go outside" is revolutionary, we are completely out of ideas. But I don't think that's the case. The trapping of young (and not-so-young) people by their screens may, in the long run, be a barely-mentioned blip compared with the Romantics, and I think that actually comports with this and other of your essays. If, as you rightly point out, the advancement represented by "AI," Web3, etc, is paltry compared to indoor plumbing, the combustion engine, antibiotics, than we should expect the reaction to them to be equally unimpressive.